people have been predicting the pinball sky is falling, the bubble is about to pop, for as long as i've been in the hobby. hasn't happened yet and i doubt it will in the next decade. if anything, i see less short term flipping than i did a couple years ago (which is the real indicator of a potential bubble bursting). demand is solid, parts are available, interest is growing. the new games being built next year are a drop in the bucket compared to what's available, and even then those new games are really only an option for the high-end collector. they aren't going to saturate anything. worst case scenario, 90s DMD games take a minor hit (allowing more guys in their 30s to enter the hobby, being able to afford that WH20 or Addams Family or whatever they played as a kid).

on the subject of the economy, it's pretty much the same -- i can't remember a year in the last 25 where there hasn't been a contingent of people people armed with charts and graphs showing "proof" that the next great depression is right around the corner, and telling anyone who will listen to stock up on gold, canned goods, and ammo, and stuff all your money under the mattress. so far they are batting 1 for 25 (in 2007).

haha wow that is the jerkiest post i've seen in a while. not here to make friends, huh?

luckily this hobby isn't made up entirely (or even mostly) of 50 year old men. i'm in my 30s, and so are a lot of other people here. most of us have a long, long way to go before our estate sales. if you're saying pin prices will drop in 20 years, well frankly who freaking cares. we are talking about next year or the year after. the 0.1% of pinball collectors who die in 2016 aren't going to crash the market.

good for you, you can buy up our cheap games 20 years from now. for the immediate future pin prices are pretty stable and the state of the hobby is healthy and growing.

stating your opinion isn't jerky. stating your opinion as FACT is jerky, and so is saying "get over it already, it's reality".

i think you are ridiculously over estimating the decrepitude of most pinball collectors. vast majority aren't frail old geezers. they are going to be doing what they're doing for quite a while still. if you're talking about trends that are going to emerge 10-20 years from now ... again, who cares. if i didn't buy a thing because i was afraid it would go down in value 15 years later ... i would own literally nothing.

criss, i think you're missing the point. i mean sure, i imagine someday pinball prices will fall off. i doubt these things will be revered until the end of time. i just seriously doubt, given the interest and growth of the hobby, that "someday" is coming in the next decade. we 30 and 40 somethings are in general just coming into the peak of our buying power, which typically lasts many years. i think it's a long wait (decades) for pinball enthusiasts to age out of the hobby en masse enough to effect prices, even if it does die with our generation (which i think is far from certain). so who cares. the pinball market might collapse in 20 years. or maybe not. take that info and make a mint with it if you can, in the meantime i'll be playing and working on and buying and trading awesome games.

i mean, that was my understanding.

way to equate femininity with weakness. and by the way, you did make an overtly political post, i don't know how you can pretend it wasn't. then when people didn't like it, you got upset and started slinging sexist insults. i thought men were supposed to be tough. who's got the thin skin now?

you could always try petty sniping at people with cool cars, apparently that's pretty satisfying. oh hey you guys are one step ahead of me.

I know a bunch of people trying to break into the hobby at the $1k to $2k mark. Anecdotally, there's a lot of new demand there. Higher up the ladder, I think it's just, you know, a lot of dough for a niche used game that kinda tends to break a lot. Generally speaking.